The Internet vs. Julian Assange vs. the Internet

Recently I’ve been seeing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s name listed alongside other great tech minds of our age: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg. But what fascinates me about the Internet is that Anonymous — the moniker given to the throngs of faceless Web users out there — both admire Assange and ridicule him at the same time.

Assange

Though Wikileaks and Assange had already gained plenty of attention in 2010, Assange was really thrust into the global spotlight in late November, when Wikileaks published thousands of embarrassing U.S. diplomatic cables. A Swedish sexual assault investigation into Assange helped governments, media and activists villainize him as all but a terrorist.

When Bank of America, MasterCard, Visa and PayPal stopped dealing with Wikileaks in early December, Anonymous came out of nowhere to launch denial-of-service (DOS) attacks against the companies’ websites. The collective Internet, pushing an agenda of openness, had defended its hero Assange through cyberactivism.

Which is why a recent contest on a design website cracks me up. About the same time as the DOS attacks, 99designs.com began a competition for people to come up with new hairstyles for the notorious pretty boy. And Anonymous turned out in droves.

These new Julian Assange hairstyles were submitted by 99designs user Sedrik.

But Assange is a cyberspace superstar. Why would Anonymous want to belittle him?

On the whole, they don’t. Internet geeks know such memes are generally tongue-in-cheek. The 99designs contest is no exception — in fact, it’s a good example of the online community’s exalting somebody by spoofing them.

However — as Wikileaks itself is proving — the Internet is no longer just fun and games. Assange and Anonymous seem to have a fickle and nebulous relationship; they love him and he loves them, but they also clash heads.

Earlier this month, a Vanity Fair article revealed that Assange has struggled with the very online openness he championed — specifically, when he threatened to sue The Guardian newspaper of London if it published Wikileaks documents a fellow Wikileaker leaked from Wikileaks.

Assange’s position was rife with ironies. An unwavering advocate of full, unfettered disclosure of primary-source material, Assange was now seeking to keep highly sensitive information from reaching a broader audience. He had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents, and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange — that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission. Enraged that he had lost control, Assange unleashed his threat, arguing that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released.

This could lead us to a whole nother, yet related, topic: figures who once represented progress but are now villified. Gates was a tech-industry hero but became a face of corporate monopoly. Zuckerberg, once a nerdy outcast, transformed into that one billionaire who steals all of our personal information — regardless of whether it’s true.

In the mainstream, Assange is a divisive figure — a good deal of Americans might say he’s a traitor, even though he’s Australian — but let’s stick with how the active online community sees him. This hasn’t happened, yet, but I could see Assange’s reputation turn from “transparency hero” to “information hoarder.” With a business in balance, Assange is walking a fine line between the two.

Indeed, some people have registered Web addresses such as killjulianassange.com and julianassangemustdie.com. On the Internet, for every action there is a reaction — well, a lot of reaction.

But, I digress. Where were we? Oh yeah — funny Photoshops of Julian Assange! Check them all out here.